Former Daily Show exec-producer and Area Jerk Ben Karlin will be one of two writers on the upcoming movie based on How to Talk to Girls, that book written by precocious little nine-year-old jerk Alec Greven.

We give Ben Karlin shit because we've heard he's pretty much a dick, what with his idea-stealing from neighbors and all. Anecdotal evidence from anonymous commenters supports this. ("[H]e chooses to repeatedly compromise that talent by going out of his way to undermine those who work with him," you say. Ok!) Then he curated that terrible-sounding book about getting dumped. But he also used to write for Space Ghost! The New York Press would like you to know about the other side of Ben Karlin. They'd like you to maybe give him a second chance. The way they go about it is all wrong, though: did you know Ben Karlin is also an alternadad?

Ben Karlin, the funnyman former Daily Show producer who is, unfortunately, kind of a dick, is currently suing some company over a book about Spain. Mario Batali is involved, too. What in the world is Ben Karlin doing working on a book about Spain, which does not appear to be a comedy project? We don't know, but it sure sounds like the guy is (wisely) just signing up for any old book that'll cut him a check:

Former Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin seems like a decent fellow, right? He was responsible for some of the smartest comedy to air on American TV since basically ever, that Daily Show book was pretty funny, Deborah Solomon couldn't make him seem like as much of an asshole as she does most of her interviewees. And, as he said last August, when announcing his HBO production deal, he is a man of ideas. Hundreds of ideas. "At least initially, he said, he planned to revisit some of the half-formed notions in his notebook, which he likened to the aging Russian nuclear arsenal. “'Many of the weapons I have may still be good,'” he said. “'Others may not go off.'”" Apparently the idea which did go off was the one he borrowed from a guy in his building!

Ben Karlin, who was an executive producer and head "Daily Show" writer for eight years, comes out to talk about how jealous "mainstream" journalists are about the Jon Stewart show. "They would always come up to us, everyone without fail would say, and especially like the big on-camera people, would come up to us and say 'God I wish I could do what you do.' Really? Do it! You have a camera, you have a microphone, you have a television show.... It was a prison of their own construction." [Huffington Post]

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Tiny People Injected Into the Sickly Body Of Originality Edition: Roland Emmerich will direct a remake of Fantastic Voyage for 20th Century Fox. [Variety]
· Production has temporarily stopped on 24 so that the hit show's writers have enough time to adequately dramatize every apocalyptic scenario that would probably come to pass if a Hillary Clintonesque president ever assumed our highest office. [THR]
· Former Daily Show/Colbert Report EP Ben Karlin explains the just-announced, combined film/television deal he signed with a certain premium cable outlet: "When my reps asked me what I wanted to do next, I said firmly, 'not TV.' They said, 'HBO.' I had to admit, they had me there." [Variety]
· ABC's new NASCAR in Prime tanks its premiere, probably because the show clearly belongs on Fox. [THR]
· Jerry Bruckheimer informs CBS that it must buy his drama pilot about a "globetrotting team of freelance treasure hunters" or he will withdraw every one of the 45 weekly hours of programming he generates for them; the network, of course, happily complies, remarking about how much they always wanted a more expensive, scripted version of The Amazing Race. [Variety]